That people often experience trouble sleeping in a different bed in unfamiliar surroundings is a phenomenon known as the 4Tirst-nighf, effect. If a person stays in the same room the following night they tend to sleep more soundly. Yuka Sasaki and her colleagues at Brown University set out to investigate the origins of this effect.
Dr. Sasaki knew the first-night effect probably has something to do with how humans evolved.
The puzzle was what benefit would be gained from it when performance might be affected the following day. She also knew from previous work conducted on birds and dolphins that these animals put half of their brains to sleep at a time so that they can rest while remaining alert enough to avoid predators (捕食者). This led her to wonder if people might be doing the same thing. To take a closer look, her team studied 35 healthy people as they slept in the unfamiliar environment of the university’s Department of Psychological Sciences. The participants each slept in the department for two nights and were carefully monitored with techniques that looked at the activity of their brains. Dr. Sasaki found, as expected, the participants slept less well on their first night than they did on their second, taking more than twice as long to fall asleep and sleeping less overall. During deep sleep, the participants’ brains behaved in a similar manner seen in birds and dolphins. On the first night only, the left hemispheres (半球) of their brains did not sleep nearly as deeply as their right hemispheres did.
Curious if the left hemispheres were indeed remaining awake to process information detected in the surrounding environment, Dr. Sasaki re-ran the experiment while presenting the sleeping participants with a mix of regularly timed beeps (蜂鸣声) of the same tone and irregular beeps of a different tone during the night. She worked out that, if the left hemisphere was staying alert to keep guard in a strange environment, then it would react to the irregular beeps by stirring people from sleep and would ignore the regularly timed ones. This is precisely what she found.
1.What do we learn about Dr. Yuka Sasaki doing her research?
A. She found birds and dolphins remain alert while asleep.
B. She found birds and dolphins sleep in much the same way.
C. She got some idea from previous studies on birds and dolphins
D. She conducted studies on birds’ and dolphins’ sleeping patterns.
2.What did Dr. Sasaki do when she first did her experiment?
A. She monitored the brain activity of participants sleeping in a new environment.
B. She recruited (招募) 35 participants from her Department of Psychological Sciences.
C. She studied the differences between the two sides of participants’ brains.
D. She tested her findings about birds and dolphins on human subjects.
3.What did Dr. Sasaki do when re-running her experiment?
A. She analyzed the negative effect of irregular tones on brains.
B. She recorded participants’ adaptation to changed environment.
C. She exposed her participants to two different stimuli (刺激物).
D. She compared the responses of different participants.
4.What did Dr. Sasaki find about the participants in her experiment?
A. They tended to enjoy certain tones more than others.
B. They tended to recognize irregular beeps as a threat.
C. They felt sleepy when exposed to regular beeps.
D. They differed in their tolerance of irregular tones
A new study has found that social media could be affecting the sleep of young adults.
The study is a project of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine. They found that young people who often use social media are more likely to suffer from sleep disorders than those who use social media less. The researchers say doctors should ask young adults about their use of social media when treating sleep issues.
“This is one of the first pieces of evidence that social media use really can influence your sleep.” said Jessica C Levenson. She was the lead author of a report on the study.
The researchers set out to examine the connection between social media use and sleep among young adults. Levenson noted that these young adults are possibly the first “generation to grow up with social media.”
The researchers wanted to find out how often young people used social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Credit and Tumbler. For the study, they gave questionnaires to nearly 1,800 adults, aged 19 to 32. On average, members of the study group used social media sites one hour a day. They also "visited various social media 30 times per week.”
Thirty percent of the study's participants reported having serious problems with sleeping. Those people who used social media a lot were three times more likely to have a sleep disorder. And those who spent the most time on social media were two times as likely to suffer from sleep disturbances.
Levenson said the number of times a person visits social media is a better predictor of sleep problems than overall time spent on social media. If this is true, she adds, then practices that stop such behaviors may be the most effective.
1.What's the main idea of the text?
A. The researchers focus on social media.
B. The researchers manage to handle sleep problems.
C. Doctors treat young patients.
D. Social media affects sleep.
2.When treating sleep problems, doctors are advised to ________.
A. offer some advice about giving up social media
B. ask the patients about young adults’ use of social media
C. give young adults some medicine
D. ask about the patients' living conditions
3.How did the researchers mainly carry out the study?
A. By doing online research. B. By giving an example.
C. By collecting published data. D. By doing questionnaires.
4.What can be inferred from the text?
A. Men are more likely to suffer from a sleep disorder than women.
B. People often using social media are less likely to have a sleep disorder.
C. Using computers less helps avoid sleep problems completely.
D. Sleep problems can be determined by the times of a person visiting social media.
Thomas Hardy, probably the most searching and knowledgeable novelist of our time, was born on June 2, 1840, in Dorsetshire, England. He died on January 11, 1928. In his youth, Hardy read much and dreamt of becoming a poet, but he studied and practiced architecture as an assistant to a London architect, winning a prize for design. The fine descriptions of structure in his novels were probably somewhat due to his architectural training.
For five years he worked hard to practise writing poetry, but when he was twenty-seven, Hardy turned to fiction. His first story was accepted two years later, but upon the advice of George Meredith he decided not to publish it. His first novel, Desperate Remedies, appeared in 1871. During the next twenty-five years he published fourteen novels and two collections of short stories.
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) he never surpassed(超越)in happy and delicate perfection of art. This and his next novel, A pair of Blue Eyes (1873), begin to show deep irony(讽刺) which is so obvious throughout Hardy’s writings.
Far from the madding Crowd (1874) was his first popular success. In it is shown Hardy’s amazing power of describing nature as symbolic background for his characters, an organic part of the action of his story. This was the earliest of what he called his novels of character and environment, which included The Return of the Native, Tess of D’Urbervilles, his masterpiece, and Jude the Obscure. Not until he was fifty-eight years old was his first collection of poems published, and he was sixty-four when the first part of The Dymats, surprised the literary world.
1.How did Thomas Hardy benefit from his architectural career?
A. He could practice writing while working. B. He made a lot of money to support his writing.
C. He found material for his novels and poems. D. He applied architectural knowledge in his novels.
2.What is Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree considered to be?
A. One of his masterworks. B. One of his best collections of poems.
C. His best novel in perfection of art. D. His first popular success.
3.Which of the following is one of his novels of character and environment?
A. Desperate Remedies. B. A pair of Blue Eyes. C. Tess of D’Urbervilles D. The Dymats.
4.What type of writing is this text?
A. A biography. B. A book review. C. A novel. D. A news report.
It’s a white Christmas in the United States today, with snow falling from Seattle to Maine.
• Northeast
Biting winds with snow swept the Northeast.
Earlier, up to 15 inches of snow fell during a snow storm in Maine, while up to one foot fell in New Hampshire. Winds reached 76 mph on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, while up to 61 mph winds tore through Long Island, New York. Falling snow collected on the runways at Boston’s Logan International Airport, causing temporary flight delays.
The wind was so severe in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that the annual (重演) of George Washington and his soldiers’crossing the Delaware River was canceled, the Washington Crossing Historic Park told ABC News.
• Midwest
Heavy lake effect snow fell in western Michigan.
The National Weather Service has issued a wind-chill warning and advisory (公告) from Montana to Michigan. Bitter cold air in the Midwest produced wind chills Monday morning as low as minus 48 degrees in North Dakota and minus 47 in northern Minnesota.
As this bitter cold made its way east overnight, it was expected to move over relatively mild Great Lakes, producing intense lake-effect snow bands capabie of producing 2 to 4 inches of snow in an hour.
• West Coast
That storm system moved overnight through the Rockies, bringing more snow and the threat of avalanches(雪崩). The National Weather Service has issued an avalanche warning for the Wasatch Range Mountains outside Salt Lake City.
1.Why was the annual reenactment of George Washington and his soldiers’crossing the Delaware River canceled?
A. Because the river was frozen. B. Because the wind was too strong.
C. Because the snow was too thick. D. Because the temperature was too low.
2.Which of the following is the bad weather that has set in according to the passage?
A. The avalanches. B. A white Christmas.
C. A mess of people’s life. D. Heavy snow, biting wind and chills.
3.What is the style of the passage?
A. Weather report.
B. News about the effect of bad weather.
C. News about bad weather.
D. A bad-weather warning and advisory.
听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1.Where will the recycling campaign be held?
A. In a school. B. In a radio station. C. In a recycling center.
2.When will the recycling campaign begin?
A. At 8:00 am on July 8th. B. At 10:00 am on July 10th. C. At 10:00 am on July 18th.
3.Why does the speaker ask the listeners to bring cans?
A. To use them to play games. B. To put them in the special recycling bins.
C. To learn how to sort household rubbish.
4.How can the listeners know more about the recycling campaign?
A. By making a call. B. By listening to the radio. C. By reading the newspapers.
听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。
1.What kind of flowers does the man order?
A. A dozen red carnations. B. A dozen yellow carnations. C. A dozen pink roses.
2.Where should the flowers be sent?
A. No.84, WM Street. B. No.48, MW Road. C. No.84, MW Street.
3.What does the man require the woman to do at last?
A. Call him to confirm the information. B. Call before delivering the flowers. C. Help him write a letter.
4.What can we learn from the conversation?
A. The flowers are for the man's mom. B. The man will pay for the flowers in cash.
C. The flowers will be delivered to the man's home.
